Welcome to the inaugural Game Over end-of-year game list! It’s a little different from most Game of the Year lists!! A massive backlog leads me to try other games besides those that only come out in the current year. Expanding my gaming experience requires playing legendary games I missed. I have broken this list down into three categories: NEW favorites, OLD Favorites, and It’s Complicated.
But first, let’s discuss 2023 a little. Gamers will look back fondly on 2023 as one of the best years in gaming history. It’s also important to remember that working in the game industry sucked in 2023, but let’s focus on the positive. Gaming was amazing this year. There were many fantastic experiences, no matter where your preferences lay. Whether you only play on Xbox, PC, or Playstation, like ‘AAA’ gaming experiences, or the single-handedly developed indie darling with a little less polish, there was a game for you.
Gaming has become about choice. PC gaming no longer has a massive cost of entry, Xbox Game Pass is the best value in the gaming industry, and Sony has incredible first-party titles coming out every year (except 2024, randomly). This is such a wonderful time to be a gamer. They release hundreds of exceptional experiences every single year. Now is the time to expand your horizons!
Okay, enough musing. Let’s talk about games I loved, new and old, and a couple of games I have a lot to say about…
NEW Favorites
Hi-Fi Rush
First up, a game that was Game of the Year for the majority of 2023 until a certain game revolving around a big Gate released. Hi-Fi Rush is nearly perfect. Everything revolves around rhythm and music: combat, traversal, puzzles, and even the characters. The story was engaging, characters were fun, and the villains were memorable. Hi-Fi Rush demonstrated that a 10 hour single player experience can be just as good, if not better, than the normal 40 hour experiences of the video game industry.
Play Hi-Fi Rush. It’s on Game Pass!
Super Mario Bros: Wonder
Another year and another Mario game that demonstrates how good Nintendo is at making a video game. Super Mario Bros: Wonder took the same side-scrolling Mario formula and injected a world of wonder in it. Here’s my review from a couple months ago, and the sentiment is the same. It is a wonderful game. Whether you’re playing alone or with family members, it’s a ton of fun. It’s another perfect example of a 10 hour game being an incredible experience. Multiple times, I thought, “damn this is fun,” during my playthrough of Wonder.
Some games forget that fun aspect of video games. Nintendo sure doesn’t. Super Mario Bros: Wonder was exactly what I needed.
Baldur’s Gate 3
And here we have the exact opposite of the previous two games: a mammoth 100 hour RPG that has rightfully received all the acclaim. What more needs to be said about Baldur’s Gate 3!? How many more accolades can one game get!? It cleaned up at The Game Awards, along with every other game award known to man.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a marvel of the video game industry. A single-player game with more choice than any game in recent memory, possibly any game ever. You can handle any situation or combat in a multitude of ways, with the story changing based on the roll of a die. Let’s let @momo_obrien demonstrate:
I loved many games in 2023, but no game was this chaotic and amazing. There are literally thousands of different ways to handle situations and enemies in Baldur’s Gate 3. Combine all of that with a fantastic cast of characters and you have a game that many people (myself included) will come back to time and time again just to see how they would handle different situations differently.
And it’s my Game of the Year. Obviously.
OLD Favorites
Persona 4 Golden
Persona games are phenomenal. LONG games they might be, but the Atlus series always keeps the marathons interesting. Persona 5 is one of my favorite games ever, and Persona 4 quickly climbed that list when I played it earlier in 2023 during a lull. It’s not as polished as P5, but the building blocks of that masterpiece came from Persona 4 Golden.
The story, characters, and overall style are incredible. The soundtrack has that Atlus flair to enhance the experience while implanting every song into your brain forever. Persona games are wonderful experiences that everyone should attempt at least once. As long as you can find time for a 100 hour game…
I’ve been having trouble with that recently…
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
The WiiU was a troubled console. Nintendo had the ambition to innovate on the Wii, except they missed the mark a little. The target they were shooting for was the Nintendo Switch, so porting over all the WiiU games was Nintendo’s first goal. The overlooked game everyone should play is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, especially if you love the SNES Donkey Kong Country games. This game has an incredible level design that makes the game so much fun, even while you fail time and time again. Yes, it’s one of the hardest games I’ve ever played, but it’s worth it to keep going. The fun characters and music lessen the punch a little, unlike an equally punishing Souls game that laughs at wannabe gamers like me. The Switch version debuted a Funky Kong mode for those looking to lessen the challenge.
It’s a fun game that rekindled my love of the series.
It’s Complicated…
This section is for the games I have mixed feelings about. They had high highs and ungodly lows. The games that are hard to review on a binary scale with an arbitrary number. Games like these are why I’m ditching review scores headed into 2024. Games are art forms, and you cannot grade art on a simple scale.
This category contains two games from 2023, but future installments might have backlog games too. First up, a Game of Thrones knock-off, featuring a man named Clive.
Final Fantasy 16
Final Fantasy XVI is a blast to experience…if it were a movie. As a video game, there are issues here. Long gone are the wonderful turn-based combat systems of Final Fantasy’s past. In their place is a combat system looking like a Devil May Cry game. This makes sense because one of the directors, Ryota Suzuki, directed DMC5. It is honestly a fun system, but it truly does not feel like a Final Fantasy game. They combined the fast-paced combat with some of the most boring RPG elements ever, which makes for an immensely uneven experience. It feels like a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be; an RPG or an action game.
The story is fine, albeit predictable. Magic users being slaves is a cool setting and leads to some interesting side stories. Overall, it’s the set pieces that make this game memorable. Those feel like Final Fantasy, and they are MASSIVE set pieces. Summons in Final Fantasy XVI come from within the magic users, so becoming the Aeons/Eidolons/Eikons during combat is cool. It’s not super difficult though, which is disappointing. Becomes a little like a Quick Time Event.
Oh…and it’s WAYYYY too long.
Starfield
Every single game has warts, no matter how many “Game of the Year” awards it accumulates. Bethesda games are no exception, and have become synonymous with being buggy. Their games and bugs go hand in hand like Peanut Butter and Jelly. On the whole, Bethesda fans love the massive scope and worlds of their games. Starfield is on a whole different level of scope; the entirely of space. Because of that, Bethesda would pack Starfield with a metric ton of worlds to explore and stuff to do, right?
Yes and no.
There is A LOT of stuff to do in Starfield, and a bunch of it is really fun! I logged 80 hours, did a ton of side quests, finished the main storyline, and still had a novel-sized mission log. That amount of stuff can be paralyzing, but those who love Bethesda games will love Starfield. Unfortunately, the major worlds are the only places where you can find the best quest lines, which leaves the rest feeling empty. It’s space, so maybe that’s what Bethesda was going for?
The emptiness pales in comparison to how bad some mechanics are. Stealth is bad, space combat is wonky, persuasion is random chance, and encumbrance is atrocious. Most of the initial skill points are to make those mechanics less terrible.
Where Starfield shines is in the stories. They are fantastic. A couple of my favorites were:
- Escalating and ending a drug war on Neon
- Giving a Rogue AI sentience
- I discovered a criminal rehab being built on a random planet. This quest line dove into the morality of criminal rehab versus just locking them up. It was one of my favorites!
- One of the longest quest lines revolved around becoming a corporate fixer, and all the shadiness of the corporate world. We played dirty for bigger paychecks and status; the American way!
This is where Starfield shines. It’s at its best when the player derives from the main story and picks a random quest to follow. They were almost good enough to push it into my top 3, but not quite!
Happy 2024 and Onward!
Here’s to another year of amazing games! Thanks for reading!!!